Dana and John Kouretas always loved the quaint charm of the two-bedroom home they bought in 1998, before they had children. It was on a big, pie-shaped lot in Willow Glen and just a block from the coffee houses and boutiques of Lincoln Avenue. So after having two children and plans for a third, they knew it was time to expand. They wanted to more than double its size, from 2,000 to 4,400 square feet. But maintain the quaint charm? That was a tall order.

With old-fashioned detailing in marble and wrought iron, eclectic furnishings and fixtures new and old, and lots of windows pulling in light and framing leafy views, the Kouretas family couldn’t be happier.

“It’s quite big and looks big on the outside, but inside, people are like, ‘oh, it feels more homey than you would think,’” Dana said. “People who had been in the old house said it feels like the old house, but everything is opened up.”

The couple had been clipping ideas from magazines for years before they hired architect Larry Kahle from Metropolis Architecture in Mountain View and Kathleen Monarch of Monarch Designs in San Jose. John acted as general contractor.

“I liked a lot of light, a lot of windows,” Dana said. “I wanted it to be traditional, but not stuffy traditional.”

She liked Spanish European and French styles, too. So how to blend it all together, so it’s worthy of hundreds of lookiloos traipsing through on the Willow Glen Homes Tour in early May?

And don’t forget, she wanted the house to feel cozy. With ceilings designed at 10 feet downstairs and nine feet upstairs, Kathleen Monarch knew she was in for a challenge. And the last thing she wanted was the house to feel so huge it echoes and so stark it’s cold. So what did she do?

“I never wanted it to look like a designer house,” Kathleen said. “The family is so warm and welcoming to everybody and this huge expanded family and friends, I wanted it to feel like that inside. To me the house looks like them.”

But what does that mean when it gets down to the business of decor?

It means listening to the clients and pushing their boundaries a bit. Dana likes pastels, so Kathleen “tried to take that and take them out of the box a little further, make them go to a place where they’re a little nervous.”

With a crisp white backdrop in trims, doors, cabinets and baseboards, the duo decided on a rich brown for the study, a deep rust for the dining room, and yellows, pinks and greens elsewhere.

“Everything had to pop off white,” Kathleen said. “Even the materials we selected had a lot of white in them, white Carrera marble, white Calcutta marble. The kitchen island I did in honed black granite. The white and black grounded everything.”

They also played with scale and textures.

In the living room, with the French style cast concrete mantel, a fluffy white rug softens the room. In the master bedroom, a custom-designed minty green mohair headboard contrasts with the sparkling mirrored dresser.

The white-on-white master bath, which combines five different tiles with various patterns, from brick to Versailles, is a favorite.

“It’s a combination of so many materials, but nothing is jarring. Nothing is shiny,” Kathleen said. With so much white, she added, “you can’t look like you went to Vegas. Everything is honed down.”

Dana included her family antiques throughout the house, including her great-grandmother’s china hutch in the dining room and her grandmother’s twin beds that are now in her daughters’ room. She also has a favorite pair of Bergere chairs she picked up at a garage sale for $300, a fraction of what would be more than $2,000 new.

The house has become the center of the couple’s extended family, who often gather three-deep in the kitchen to prepare Greek meals. Their third child, a boy, was a toddler when they finished the project.

“Ever since we moved back in, it’s like, ‘let’s go to John and Dana’s house,’” Dana said. “And that’s what we like.”

(Photographs by Desiree Northend)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 12:25 am and is filed under Architecture, Bathroom, Bedroom, Decorating, Dining Room, Family Room, Garden, Home Decor, Home and Garden, House Tours, Interior Design, Julia, Lighting, Modern, Peek of the Week, Remodel, Wall Decor, Willow Glen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.